


The Soldiers, Spies and Spectre

by JunkMail



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Garrus is best doggo, Gen, ME Headcannon, Mid Winter Solider, Post ME3, Shepard and Rogers competing for Old Vet Status, Shepard in Marvel's Cinematic Universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-05-08 18:59:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14700252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JunkMail/pseuds/JunkMail
Summary: Nick Fury is a man of many talents. He is an expert organiser, motivator, and delegator, not to mention that back in the day he wasn’t all that bad at shooting shit either. So when the Winter Soldier tries to kill him, Hydra reveals itself from inside his organisation, and the world is on the brink of a global genocide, he makes a few phone calls.One of them to a woman who’s been content up until now to sit on the sidelines in peaceful retirement.





	1. The Retired Life

**~I don’t own Mass Effect or Captain America, all copyrighted content goes to their respective owners~**

* * *

 

Looking out of her open kitchen window, at the fields of wheat that stretched on for miles, Alison Gunn sighed in contentment as she took a sip of her morning coffee.

By her feet, Garrus happily wagged his tale while he ate his breakfast. The black German Shepherd proving more than eager to start the day, especially since there was going to be company over.

It was a peaceful existence, away from the majority of civilisation, with the sound of birds chirping doing more to remind Alison of the days of her youth than the long years that had followed it.

At the ripe old age of 43, she wasn’t considered all that old, even by her current world’s standards. But war had the tendency of ageing a person beyond their physical years.

In the other room, the sound from her TV drifted through. The news channel she had left it on rerunning a segment on the death of Nicholas Fury, the former Director of Shield.

Alison grimaced as the news reporter continued on to the outstanding warrant for Captain America’s arrest, asking for the public to assist by calling the authorities if anyone caught sight of him.

Shaking herself from her thoughts, she quickly drained the rest of her coffee and placed the ceramic cup in the sink. As she turned around, Garrus looked up to reveal a clean bowl, and Alison rewarded him by opening the back door, letting the hound bound outside to expend some energy, before turning and heading off to get ready.

Janet and her two sons were coming over in an hour to assist in the field work. Her friendly neighbour having made it abundantly clear over the past four and a half years that tending to 300 acres of farm land was not the job for one middle aged woman and her dog.

Smiling as she headed up the stairs, Alison let out a chuckle as she shook her head in bemusement. Outside, Garrus made a nuisance of himself riling up the chickens, which only made Alison smile harder when she heard the startled squawks and excited barking.

Thirty minutes later, and Alison stepped out of her shower and towelled off, before walking into her bedroom and grabbing a set of clean clothes from her wardrobe, getting dressed quickly.

Grabbing a comb and a hair band, she moved out onto the small balcony that extended out over the top of her porch, letting the warm weather dry the remaining water off her skin as she combed her vibrant red hair into submission, pulling it back into a short pony tail.

It was shaping up to be another hot Kansas day, and Alison groaned as she rolled her shoulders, her neck cracking as she twisted it from one side to the other.

Scanning the surrounding area, it only took her a few moments to pick out Garrus, his dark form obscured slightly in the shade of a nearby oak tree.

Satisfied that everything was in order, she headed back inside with the intent of getting some breakfast ready. Only to come to an abrupt halt when a distinctive beeping became audible.

With a frown marring her features, she walked over and grabbed her watch from where it was sitting on top of her chest of drawers.

To anyone else who might have seen it, it looked like a perfectly average, if worn, analogue watch, made of a solid silver metal with little in the way of eccentricity.

Pressing down on the toggle set in the side of the watch, Alison waited until she heard an audible click, before pressing her thumb onto the watch’s face.

Barely a few moments later, the inside of the watch lit up. An orange holographic interface coming to life on her wrist as the watch reconfigured, revealing micro-projectors hidden within the metal of the watch, before the device cycled to reveal an incoming call.

Hitting the floating accept icon, Alison’s eyes hardened as a man’s deep voice spoke out.

_“Agent Exspiravit.”_

Alison Shepard felt her face shift into a mask of blunt determination, her back straightening slightly as she responded in kind. “Director Fury. According to the six o’clock news, you’re supposed to be dead and buried.”

_“Reports of my death were… greatly exaggerated.”_

Shepard found herself snorting in mild amusement. “Then this better be important.”

The man on the other end seemed to sigh, although whether in annoyance or exasperation she didn’t know.

_“The terms of our agreement were more than clear. I need you in the field. Now.”_

Shepard exhaled through her nose, grimacing as she turned to look out the nearest window towards the road. In the distance, the sign of a car approaching was rather easy to spot. Janet and her kids would be here soon.

She had a few minutes, at least.

“Then you’ve got me. When and Where?”

_“Cleveland, Ohio. In the next six hours, if possible. I’ll send you the precise coordinates for the meetup.”_

“Understood.”

Dropping the call, Shepard waited until her watch pinged with a set of coordinates, before she shut down the interface and turned to face her bed.

Walking over to it with brisk strides, she reached down and lifted it up at one end, the mattress and bedding lifting up on large hinges to reveal a hidden alcove filled with books, clothing and other assorted domestic items underneath.

A quick wave of the watch had the floor of the compartment falling smoothly down and away, a different compartment filled with advanced looking combat gear and weapons rising to replace it.

As she grabbed a carrier bag and started to stuff it with her equipment, Shepard began running through the different excuses she had for leaving on such short notice.

She hoped Janet wouldn’t mind taking care of Garrus for a little while.


	2. Finding an Old Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard learns the situation, and gets back in the command chair.

In total, the flight from Kansas to Cleveland took a little over two hours, and from there it was another hour’s drive in a rented pickup truck from one side of the city to the other.

After getting off the freeway and navigating more urban roads, she eventually pulled up behind a storage warehouse about half a mile out from the coordinates Fury had sent her.

Shutting off the engine and getting out, Shepard kept her movements casual as she went around to the truck bed and grabbed her gear, the large duffle bag containing everything she wasn’t already wearing, before she moved to make the rest of the journey on foot.

After trekking through a small woodland forest, she eventually came across an old stone-built dam. Her omni-tool telling her it was the Lakeview Cemetery Dam, the large structure almost completely hidden away from the outside world and an excellent place to hide in plain sight.

Shepard had to admit, to the average civilian, it would have looked like any other old government owned building. But she wasn’t anything close to an average civilian, and she quickly spotted the hidden sniper nests that were secreted into the nearby hills that surrounded the dam. The high-tech rifles the extremely attentive-looking guards were holding weren’t anything close to standard issue either, and she was careful to remain concealed behind thicker trees in case they had thermal vision scopes.

It wasn’t particularly difficult to map the patrol routes for the guards on station, although keeping herself invisible to the two sniper nests that were covering a fire escape would have been far more difficult if she hadn’t brought her tactical cloak with her.

Once safely inside, Shepard made her way through a small labyrinth of stone tunnels filled with crates and old machinery. Several doors with large electronic locks blocked her path, but with the majority of them being unmanned, it was rather paltry for her omni-tool to break the encryption set for the card readers.

Eventually, after a bit of detective work, newer looking footprints and scuffmarks lead her to what appeared to be some kind of temporary command or control centre.

She thought temporary, mainly because most of the equipment was either plugged in whilst still in their crates, or sitting on foldable chairs and tables. The limited number of personnel manning the equipment allowing her the opportunity to ghost about the room and subtly use one of the unused terminals to gain access to the local network.

As her tool’ began sifting through the encryption, Shepard left the command centre behind, before searching out a dark corner to allow her cloak the ability to cool down and recharge.

Finding an unlit alcove that suited her liking, Shepard made sure to keep her omni-tool between the wall and herself, minimising the orange glow.

Taking a look at the data scrolling on her screen, Shepard felt the corner of her mouth uptick in amusement.

SHEILD had updated their cybersecurity since she had last messed with it, and several security protocols seemed to be coded specifically to detect her tool’s intrusion, but despite the intelligence organisation currently having some of the best digital defences in the world, Shepard’s omni-tool was put together with a Quarian prodigy, an unshackled AI and the entire Geth Collective for tech support.

It was a joke even EDI wouldn’t have found worth making.

Quickly accessing the network’s directory, she started rummaging through some of the documents listed as ‘Classified’ and ‘Confidential’. It didn’t take her long to catch herself up on the fact that a faction had risen up inside SHEILD, and that they had been using the Winter Soldier as their personal hitman.

After skimming a few more files of interest, Shepard refocused back to her original objective. Fury was somewhere either onsite, or nearby to meet up with her.

Bringing up the facility’s floor plans, it didn’t take long for her to identify one of the most heavily guarded areas, which coincidently had zero working cameras for her to access, and it made her grimace.

The infirmary.

* * *

Waiting for the guard to go investigate the noise she had made at the other end of the hallway, Shepard slipped in through the abandoned doorway and made her way into a small but well stocked infirmary.

After taking a quick look around, she quickly noted a singular medical bed hidden behind a privacy screen. Silently making her way over to it, she carefully brushed aside the plastic divider, and winced when she saw who was sleeping on it.

Nick Fury looked like utter shit.

With a thin blanket covering everything from the waist down, she could only see the top half of his body, but the number of bandages, cuts and bruises made her wince in sympathy.

Walking over to the bed, she made sure to decloak before gently nudging the Director of SHEILD. The injured man quickly jerked into consciousness, this despite the IV attached to his arm being labelled with several different painkillers.

“Shepard.” Fury greeted her as he sat himself upright. “Looks like retirement suited you.”

“Fury.” She returned, a sardonic smile on her face. “You look like someone who could use a holiday.”

The man grunted in faint amusement. “Had a run in with the Winter Solider himself.” He explained as he made himself comfortable. “And it’s about time you got here, I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show.”

Shepard snorted. “What, and miss the opportunity to say _I told you so?_ ”

The formally deceased director grimaced, before allowing a small smirk to cross his features as he replied. “Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up farm girl. Consider me suitably humbled by your foresight.”

Spotting the chair situated next to the medical bed, Shepard perched herself on the chair’s arm and crossed her arms under her chest.

“Hey, did I or did I not warn you! I told you SHEILD needed an internal policing force.”

“Yeah well, the person I had in mind for the job wanted to settle down on some backwards farmland in Kansas.”

She huffed in faux superiority. “Hey, watch your tone, we do important work! If we didn’t exist, society today wouldn’t be able to function.”

Fury smiled at the double meaning, “Different methods, same objective. You never change, do you, Shepard?”

Chuckling, Alison dumped her bag on the ground before crossing her arms over her chest.

“Nah, where’s the fun in that?”

Before Nick could reply, the distinctive sound of a pistol’s safety getting switched had both of them tensing up on instinct, and Shepard internally berated herself for missing the movement that she could now see out of the corner of her eye.

“Hands where I can see them. _Now_.” A strong female voice ordered, and Shepard complied. Raising her arms slowly, fingers spread, she also twisted in her hips until she had a clear view of the woman holding her at gunpoint.

Mind working on autopilot, Shepard let her eyes flicker up and down the woman, cataloguing features and details, before moving to scan the rest of the room, searching for any other potential hostiles.

Not finding anybody else, Shepard kept her hands steady and her posture relaxed, even as she calculated the distance between them and the best way to approach without putting Fury in the line of fire.

Wearing a plain black tee-shirt and matching cargo pants, the brunette woman looked the same as several of the other people she had seen working earlier in the command centre. The only difference being the earpiece wrapped around her left ear and the semi-automatic pistol held firmly in her hands.

She was also pretty sure there was some sort of collapsible nightstick concealed on her left thigh, and knowing SHIELD like she did, it was probably electrified in some way.

“Who are you,” The woman demanded. “And how did you get in here?”

“Agent Hill.” Fury called out, his voice commanding. “Stand down!”

The woman visibly straightened slightly at the man’s voice, but to her credit she never let her pistol or her eyes waver from her intended target. “Sir, are you alright?”

“ _I’m_ fine,” Fury stated, sarcasm entering his voice. “But you should probably put that thing down before my _associate_ here liberates it from you.”

A frown appeared on the apparent agent’s face. “Sir?”

Steel entering his voice, Fury raised a hand to point.

“That’s an order, Maria. Put it away.”

Reluctantly lowering her pistol and putting it back in its holster, the agent shot Shepard a suspicious glance before moving to the other side of the medical bed from her. The former commander had to stop a smile from emerging onto her face as she lowered her hands, not wanting to antagonise the woman any further.

Fury sighed as he relaxed his posture slightly. Despite his attempts to hide it, Shepard could see that he was already tiring. His injuries were still clearly drawing upon most of the man’s energy.

“Right,” He stated, sounding exasperated. “I suppose introductions are in order.”

Clearing his throat, the former director gestured to the brunette agent. “Alison Shepard, meet one of my most trusted agents; Maria Hill. Agent Hill, meet my contingency plan for if SHIELD was ever compromised.”

The woman, - _Maria Hill_ , Shepard committed the name to memory - straightened at the statement. The suspicion in her eyes turning to curiosity as her boss revealed the reason for her presence.

“You’re the one he called?” She asked.

Sliding from the arm of the chair to the seat proper, Shepard nodded as she stretched out. “Probably.” She said, taking the opportunity to relax her muscles from their previously tense state. “Though it looks like I’ve accumulated a bit of rust over the years, if you managing to sneak up on me is any indication.”

From where he was situated, Nick huffed in quiet amusement. “Gotten soft with all those peaceful years in retirement? I can’t remember you letting anyone sneak up on you back when you were active.”

Agent Hill looked at the both of them incredulously. “Rusty? You call getting in here undetected, past some of the most advanced defences and skilled agents SHEILD has, _getting_ _rusty_?”

Fury waved a dismissive hand. “You should’ve seen her back in Budapest, when Agent Romanov tried to recruit her.”

If anything, that drew an even more startled look out of the agent.

“Wait, you were in Budapest? And Natasha recruited you?” She asked, staring at Shepard like she was expecting her to sprout a third arm. “Are you talking about **_that_** mission? The one so heavily classified that even **_I_** can’t read the reports?”

“Agent Barton recruited her.” Fury corrected her, “The lovely Miss Shepard here had a broken arm, shredded armour, blood coming from her eyes, nose and mouth, and let’s not forget the third degree burns scattered all over her body.” The man gave his most trusted agent a knowing smile, “ **Still** kicked our resident Russian Assassin around like it was nothing. Clint stepped in with the offer after she finished using Agent Romanov as her personal punching bag.”

Agent Hill leaned back, resting her back against a set of crates with medical symbols on them, looking suitably impressed at the endorsement. “Wow, that’s… I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Natasha getting that badly beaten in a fight.”

Shepard grunted as she pinched the bridge of her nose, old guilt rising to the surface of her thoughts. “Not my finest moment,” She admitted. “Although in my defence, I was having a really shitty year… years.” She corrected.

“An understatement if I’ve ever heard one.” Fury stated with a knowing look. “Romanov informed me that New York reminded her of ground-zero for Budapest.”

Shepard grimaced. “Yeah, I saw that shit show on the news. Sorry I couldn’t get there in time to help.”

“Not your fault,” Fury reminded her. “Events moved too fast for me to get you in place to assist, though I would have paid good money to see Loki go up against you.”

Shepard just rested her chin on her hand, a small smirk beginning to adorn her face. “I like you when you’re on pain meds. Makes you nicer.”

The man grunted, looking suitably chagrined by the declaration. “In that case, I best get you out of here before I say anything else untrue. Agent Hill can show you around and get you set up.”

Said Agent straightened up at the implied order. “Restrictions, sir?”

Fury snorted dismissively as he waved a hand. “Full clearance. Give her everything she needs, consider her your new commanding officer until I’m back on my feet.”

Noticing the brunette’s surprised face, the former director elaborated. “She’s more than qualified, and I trust her to make the right calls.”

When Hill continued to give him a disbelieving stare, the man grunted in annoyance, before reaching round and revealing that the plastic tube that should have been giving him sedatives was, in fact, not connected to the one leading from his wrist.

When Hill’s expression changed from one of disbelief to annoyance, Fury gave her a knowing smile. “I trust her.” He repeated, slowly.

Slowly, the woman nodded in agreement. “Yes, sir. Full clearance.” Before reaching across and plugging the IV in properly.

Fury nodded back with a small smile, grunting in amusement. “Good, though I wouldn’t be surprised if she hasn’t already given herself access to everything we have on site.”

Shepard gave a short bark of laughter as she pulled herself to her feet. “I may be rusty, Nick. But I’m not _that_ rusty.”

The man gave her a satisfied nod. “Then you’ll already know how fucked we are.” His blunt tone making it absolutely clear how much he liked their situation. “Hope you don’t mind working with limited resources.”

She shrugged, “I’ve always managed to do more with less anyway.”

Resting his head back onto his pillows, Fury’s posture relaxed slightly with the reassurance, and Alison watched as his pupils started to dilate slightly as the drugs began taking effect.

Placing a hand on the former director’s shoulder, she gave the man a friendly squeeze. “Get some rest, Nick. I can already tell we’re gonna need all hands on deck for this one.”

Turning around, she looked at Agent Hill as she gestured towards the door, the woman nodding in agreement as they silently left the infirmary.

“Well then,” Shepard sighed as the door shut behind them, the security guard she had distracted in order to get in earlier looking surprised at her apparently appearing from a room he hadn’t seen her enter. “I suppose we should get started.”

Squaring her shoulders and straightening her back, Shepard felt herself slipping into ‘Commander Mode’ for the first time in years, her voice dropping an octave as she began walking towards the command centre, Agent Hill quickly moving to match her pace.

“Give me a rundown of all available assets and current operations.” She ordered. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Testing out a new writing method for multi-person conversation pieces.  
> This chapter was meant to be part of the first one, but it didn't quite fit.  
> Also, for those wondering. This is currently taking place before Cap and Widow find out Fury is alive.  
> (Also, changed the location from Washington DC to Cleveland Ohio, which is where the set piece for the dam is actually located.)


	3. Getting Back in the Command Chair

Shepard had to admit, aside from a brief hesitation at the beginning, quickly banished by a glare from Agent Hill, the Ops-Tech personal Fury had cobbled together had accepted her as their Commanding Officer with a professional ease.

For her own part, it didn’t take her long to find her stride. Hill had quickly updated her on their current operations and objectives, and Shepard had run several scenarios through her head as she’d listened.

Including the men they had stationed outside as sentries, they had two full combat squads. Each squad was made up of five veterans from SHEILD’s Special Forces, with a sniper, tech-specialist, demolitions expert, and two assault-specialists per squad.

In terms of the Operations Technicians and other background staff, they were running with the bare bones of a skeleton crew.

Twenty people total, they were currently being tasked with the objective of monitoring as many media outlets as they could, whilst also tapping communications between the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, homeland security, and several other secret services abroad.

They were also trying to discreetly tap into SHEILD’s communication centre and gain access to the mainframe at SHEILD HQ.

This while also covering their own tracks to prevent anyone whom might be looking for them.

Briefly conversing with a Comms-Tech, Shepard handed over several prefabricated hacking scripts that she had used in the past to break SHEILD encryption and gain access to the organisation’s various data centres.

The look of surprise on each of the Ops-Tech’s faces as they were promptly given high-level access to SHEILD’s communication servers and Data Archives was amusing to watch unfold, although Shepard made sure to keep her own amusement off of her face.

Things were pretty quiet for the first few days, with the only real surprise coming when the perimeter guard reported unknowns moving through the trees.

In the end it turned out to just be some local kids checking out the sudden activity, but until then the entire base had gone on high alert. Putting everyone on edge and stressing out Agent Hill until the all clear came through.

Things had just began to settle when all hell broke loose. A nearby Ops-tech jumping out of her chair in order as she yelled out; “SHEILD just launched a short-range ballistic missile!”

Agent Hill was nearest and the first to respond.

“What? Where?” Alarm entering her voice, “What’s the Target?!”

“Missile just impacted a SHEILD military storage bunker,” A different Ops-tech reported, “Camp Lehigh.”

This time Shepard took command, raising her voice over the sudden catastrophe of voices as everyone started shouting out orders and questions at once.

“Find out who authorised it. I want names.” She ordered, before turning and pointing at the woman who had first spoken. “And check inventory, I want to know what was being stored there!”

Wide eyed, the Ops-tech quickly nodded her head. “Yes, ma’am.”

With order delivered the noise quietened down slightly as everyone became engrossed in their tasks. Several personnel jumping from one computer to another as they completed multiple tasks at once.

Presiding over it all, Shepard crossed her arms as Hill walked up to stand beside her.

“Why would SHEILD blow up one of their own bases?” Hill asked, a look of concern etched on her face.

Shepard shook her head. “An organisation like SHEILD only ever levels something like this when they’re in a hurry to hide or contain something.”

If anything, the frown on Hill’s face grew more pronounced. “It’s an old facility,” She stated, a harried looking Ops-tech handing her a data-pad. “One of the oldest we have, the records here say it’s been decommissioned for decades.”

Shepard gave the agent a grim smile. “And therefore a good place to hide something you don’t want accidentally found.”

“That still doesn’t explain why they used a missile instead of sending a clean-up crew.” Hill stated. “This is going to be all over the news, people are already reporting it on social media.”

“Hmm.” Shepard hummed in thought, taking a moment to watch the chaos around them. “SHEILD doesn’t just launch missiles willy nilly, something was dangerous enough to them they considered it worth the effort.”

Resisting the urge to pace, a nervous tick she had never truly managed to kick, Shepard settled for tapping her finger against her arm. Her mind running through the possible scenarios that would provoke such a heavy handed response from the government agency.

After almost ten minutes of quiet contemplation, Shepard snapped her fingers.

“What if they weren’t just trying to hide something,” She asked, “You’re right, whoever was on the bad end of that missile was too difficult for a clean-up team to deal with.”

Another thought occurred to her, “You said Fury gave Captain Rogers the data he had recovered from an offshore black-site?”

Hill seemed to blink in surprise at the abrupt change in topics. “Yes… but Fury wasn’t able to get past the encryption. It was SHEILD though, just wouldn’t accept his credentials.”

It took a hot moment, but the agent eventually came to the same possible conclusion Shepard had.

“You don’t think that…”

She was interrupted by a male Ops-tech, the man shouting out over the dim murmur in order to be heard.

“Missile strike was authorised by a Councilman Pierce!” He claimed excitedly, “Outgoing Report states that known terrorists were the intended target. The missile was launched after a priority one message was transmitted from the base’s deep storage bunker.”

“Pierce?” Shepard asked. “As in Alex Pierce?”

Hill’s eyes widened. “Captain Rogers and Agent Romanov were recently declared rouge agents. Terrorists. Could it have been them?”

“Fits the bill.” Shepard nodded, pulling up some information on her Omni-tool as she spoke. “SHEILD reports state that they’d had a lead on them, a mall complex in Cleveland, two days ago. SHEILD hardware believed to be in their possession was used at a computing store. Special Forces dispatched onsite failed to locate them.”

“If Captain Rogers and Agent Romanov managed to find out where that data came from, they would have gone to investigate.” Hill slammed her fist against the nearby wall. “Damn it!”

Nodding in agreement, Shepard ticked off the scenario with her fingers. “They accessed the data, traced the location back to that old SHEILD base, and then Pierce levelled the place when he realised they were on to him and whoever else he’s working with.”

They were interrupted again when the female Ops-tech rushed over. “Inventory says the place was filled with old computing hardware.” She reported breathlessly, “Stuff from the nineteen sixties.”

“A cover?” Hill speculated.

Shepard nodded in agreement. “Yeah, that kind of equipment should have been decommissioned and destroyed a long time ago. Whatever was developed there is buried under a ton of rubble now.”

“Damn.” Hill repeated, looking away.

Shepard found herself growing pensive, “You think they could have survived that?”

“I don’t know.” Hill said, her voice growing quiet. “Rogers is hard to kill, but Nat…”

Shepard grimaced, “We’ll never get anyone there before SHEILD locks the place down.”

Thinking for a moment, Shepard took the chance to give out some additional orders. Getting an Ops-tech to start a search on any nearby cameras for possible sightings of Captain America or the Black Widow, before she turned her attention back to Hill.

“Assume they survived.” Shepard stated, “What’s their next move?”

“Go to ground.” Hill responded immediately, “They’ll hide until they’ve recovered from any injuries and then plan their next move.”

Shepard nodded, “Alright… Alright, until we have confirmation saying otherwise, we’re gonna work under the presumption that at least one of them survived. We need to get a hold of them and compare notes.”

Hill looked up in surprise, but Shepard was already turning away and flagging down a passing Ops-tech.

“You. Get me a list of all known contacts for Natasha Romanov and Steve Rogers that _aren’t_ Shield.”

The man nodded, turning away and racing over to talk to a female colleague.

Coming to stand beside her, Hill sighed. “There won’t be many. Nat cut all her ties when she joined us and Rogers…”

Shepard grunted in faint amusement, “Oh I wouldn’t be so sure. I’ve known people like Rogers. They wear their hearts on their sleeves and can’t stand to watch others struggle against something without stepping in and helping. If Nat doesn’t have anywhere, he’ll know someone he thinks he can trust.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short piece here. The next one should contain more action.  
> Thanks to everyone whose left a Kudos, whether on this story or any of my others. Its nice to feel appreciated. :)

**Author's Note:**

> So, I re-watched the Winter Soldier online and got this idea. Don't ask me how, my head is weird.  
> I've got some idea's, both written down and not, that I'll probably get around to writing out properly at some point. Though this is more just flexing my writing muscles after a stressful Semester of Uni.  
> Don't expect more chapters anytime soon, if at all. But this felt too good to just be left on my hard drive to collect dust.


End file.
